Final thoughts on the PSPgo

It’s been more than a month since the launch of the PlayStation Portable go. The hype has died down.The grumbling is at a minimum. With emotions a little more subdued, it’s a good time to offer my final assessment of Sony’s new hand-held.

After more than 30 days with the system, I have to admit that I like. I use it daily. It’s not collecting dust in the corner or lying forgotten on a shelf, a victim of buyer’s remorse. I play the PSPgo constantly whenever I have free time. Compared with the iPhone, having a system with dedicated buttons is a relief. I can only stand so much of virtual D-pads and virtual buttons.

The biggest surprise for me was how much I appreciate the system’s memory storage. On the review unit, I played with I didn’t have the opportunity to switch between games or take it to the subway. With the one I received as gift from a very generous girlfriend, I realized that I didn’t need to bring a bag of UMDs on my trips. Everything was in a nice, small package that fits easily in my pocket.

I can hopscotch from one game to another with little effort. It’s almost like listening to an iPod for the first time and realizing that you don’t have to switch out CDs because all the albums are in one place. It works well and I don’t have many problems with storage.

I have more than 9GBs of space left after downloading 13 games to the system. In addition, SanDisk sent over its 16GB M2 stick and I put a few more games in there with no problem at all. I can play Jak and Daxter: The Lost Frontier from the M2 card and it works perfectly.

When it comes to the bad features of the system, most of it has to do with outside elements. First off, because Sony isn’t doing a UMD exchange program anymore, I had to come up with my own. I plannned to sell my old, useless UMD games to GameStop and buy PSN cards with the money.

In theory, it would have worked, but unfortunately, two weeks after the PSPgo launch, I couldn’t find one at GameStop anywhere. From what I heard, Sony was introducing a new type of card that’s activated at the register and they halted shipments of the new ones until the old ones ran out. This took a while, but recently, the new PSN cards are now in stock.

My second gripe is the pace of the games’ release. As a PSPgo owner, I have to wait a few days for the new Tuesday releases to hit the PlayStation Store. All the games hit the site on Friday, and for the rest of the week, I have no reason to visit the store. Also, the rate at which Minis are arriving is molasses slow. It’s trickling in at one or two titles per week, and I was really hoping for a flood similar to the iPhone.

Lastly, transferring my game saves from an original PSP to the fancy schmancy PSPgo is a cumbersome and time-consuming experience. SanDisk provides an Memory Stick adapter with its M2 card and I used it to transfer the save files to the new portable.

Sadly, I couldn’t upload over all my saves to the PlayStation 3 and download it to the new system. I had to shuffle the old card and new card back and forth, and in the end, it took me a whole afternoon transferring the saves I wanted.

But after suffering through all that, I still use my PSPgo. Maybe it’s just the recent spate of great games, but I’m happy with the hand-held. I was one of those PSP owners looking to get a new system because the original was just wearing down with dead pixels and duct tape holding the UMD in place.

Gieson Cacho

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The fact that it is so much more portable, easily fits in pocket and no UMDs to lug around, makes it a much needed upgrade for me.

Gieson Cacho

Yeah, I’m one of those guys who buys a game and it just lives in the PSP. I never take it out. Maybe I’m too lazy to switch discs.

Jonathan

You could’ve used a computer to transfer the saves. Either the media go software or just straight up coping the folder to the other. Anyway I agree with your blog and I enjoy my Go very much.

Gieson Cacho

Hmm, that could have worked. I should look into that next time.

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